In the contemporary intellectual scene, one prominent question is this, what made science and its success possible? One tempting strategy for dealing with this question as a philosopher of science is to use science (or more broadly, empirical inquiry) and its methods to investigate the nature of science and its success. This strategy is what used to be called naturalism. For a philosopher of science, it amounts to naturalizing her philosophical inquiry for understanding the nature of science and its success. The project of naturalizing philosophy of science has not been without its own problems. Some of the concerns are as follows. Willphilosophy of science maintain its traditional normative character after going through the process of naturalization? If it does, what form(s) will its normative content take? Can that normative content be secured without appealing to methods other than those usually used in empirical inquiries? In this essay, I will call these issues collectively the problem of normativity. First of all, I’ll look into the two most representative attempts to naturalize philosophy of science, namely L. Laudan’s and R. Giere’s attempts, focusing on the views that could be taken as their answers to the questions constituting the problem of normativity. Then I’ll examine these views in the light of some prominent criticisms and potential problems, and argue that some of those views could be defended by developing one or other additional conceptual arsenals but still others need to be curbed down admitting the apparent weaknesses of their supporting arguments. This reevaluative process will give us a better idea about what have been achieved by the attempts to naturalize philosophy of science and what their limitations are.

Justice is an important concept in philosophy since ancient times and a key phenomenon in human life (in societies). First a judge at a court, two sides, their witnesses, Lawyer-A and Lawyer-B are considered in this quasi-essay inquiry. Then pointed out that, which lawyer better develops his/her arguments, his/her side will be advantageous. Reality conceals on the one side, truth (and rightness) stands on the other. However this will be risky in social life; it may be understood by an ordinary man (or someone who doesn’t have a proper philosophical insight) as “who - obeying the rules- better diverts reality and shows that (s)he is right, his/her side wins.” Not only knowledge, but also philosophy itself loses prestige in such a tableau. Stemming from ‘Gettier-pictures,’ a “murderingevent” is presented thereafter. By help of pseudo-philosophers Prof. Truth, Prof. Reality and E.G. (“eyeglasser”) some perspectives related to “knowledge” and “knowing” are discussed while trying to analyze the mentioned event. At the end, (reflecting in the place of me) E.G. states some features (which are important for him) concerning knowledge. In this paper, ‘subject-dependency’ and internalizability (or better, interiorizability) of knowledge will be traced somehow; in addition to a search towards ‘relevant’, ‘valuable’, ‘illicit’, and ‘proper’ kinds.

We begin by taking “naturalism” in the sense in which P. F. Strawson (“Scepticism, Naturalism and Transcendental Arguments”, 1985) presented Wittgenstein’s anti-sceptical arguments as “naturalistic”. According to Strawson, this naturalism connects the philosophy of Wittgenstein with that of Hume. Then, we proceed to compare Hume’s and Wittgenstein’s positions and establish a tenet common to them, which we qualify as “meta‐philosophical”: philosophy rests on a bedrock that resists our demands of justification, a contingent “so we are, so we act” that is beyond philosophical analysis. But this negative thesis leads to differentcommitments in each philosopher: a commitment with the autonomy of nature in the case of Hume, and a commitment with the autonomy of grammar in the case of Wittgenstein. Next, we analyze the epistemological implications of each commitment, particularly with reference to the status of natural science. We find a deep divergence between Hume and Wittgenstein on this point, so that the former, but not the latter, could still be labelled as “naturalist” in a positive, more substantial sense. Our central point here is the difficulty to give a naturalistic interpretation of such Wittgensteinian notions as “language game” or “form of life”. Finally, we stress that the distance between Hume and Wittgenstein is most clearly evidenced when we consider the normative (moral) implications of Hume’s concept of nature, which are completely absent from Wittgenstein’s approach, this being a feature of Wittgenstein’s philosophy that remained unchanged all along his work.

Sustainable development can be regarded as an attempt to bridge the gap between environmental concerns about the increasingly evident ecological consequences of human activities and socio-political concerns about human development issues. The idea that science is not responding adequately to the challenges of our times, and particularly, those posed by the quest for sustainable development is gaining increasing acceptance with scientists and policy-makers. Concurrently, a new kind of science is being called for. ‘Post-normal science’ and ‘Sustainability science’ are, besides others, terms used to indicate a transition towards a new method for dealing with complex and value-laden sustainability issues. In this paper we want to assess both the need and possibility for such a new kind of science. My analysis will take a transcendental perspective by interpreting Kuhn’s paradigm as a necessary condition of possibility for scientific knowledge.

The development of string theory shows an unusual situation within the development of knowledge theory. Science achieves progress in understanding nature without direct empirical confirmation. Definitely, “an altered conception of scientific progress emerges” (R. Dawid). In our opinion, the only possibility to understand the new situation is to adopt some kind of naturalized epistemology. Naturalization viewed as declining of the a-prioriticity of philosophical knowledge, first, and reintroducing of psychology, second (P. Kitcher), gives many naturalized approaches in the realism debate field. Is it possible to extend realism heritage into the ironic science like string theory? Yes, but of course we should be bothered by the semantics issue in such a case. As Michael Devitt noted, the main question is not even the question about the connection between realism and truth, but the question about the role of semantics in general. We think that Devitt’s interpretation of the semantics role allows to extend realism even into the ironic science.

The division of the soul and its perceptions are of the most important problems that attracted Ibn Sina`s interest. Ibn Sina held that there are three kinds of the soul: vegeterian, animal, and rational soul, among which only the rational one is immaterial. The main reason of its immateriality is its perception of the inteligibles. Other perceptions are somehow immaterial, that is, perception at the stage of the sense is not abstracted from the mater and its appendixes and at the stage of imagination is abstracted from the mater and not from its appendixes and at the stage of intelligence it is abstracted from both mater and itsappendixes. And so this kind of perception is completely abstracted. Among philosophers who have discussed the problem of mind body distinction, there have been few philosophers who have presented certain proofs for the abstraction of the soul. But this issue was treated in Islamic philosophy. Moslim philosophers have extended the proofs of Plato's Phaedo and the best proof theirs proofs was the simplicity of perception that has been mentioned in Ibn Sina`s works.

Epistemology of testimony’s map has been charted by identifying the basic controversy between reductionism and non-reductions. John McDowell’s article “Knowledge by Hearsay” (1993/1998) has been taken as a clear example of non-reductionism. This is, however, only partially right. It is correct that, as a non-reductionist, he defends the justifying role that the default position plays in testimonial knowledge. But, his insistence on situating the default position inside the space of reasons suggests that default position should be understood as a kind of reasoning, and that only then evidential reasons can be applied in concrete justifying procedures. This is a very different understanding of the default position from that of classical non-reductionists such as Coady (1992) and Burge (1993, 1997). If McDowell’s epistemology of testimony can be understood in this way, as this paper aims to establish, it should be considered as an attempt tosupersede the reductionist and non-reductionist dichotomy, an attempt that brings a series of reconsiderations of a satisfactory epistemology of testimony.

The inclusion of the truth condition in the definition of knowledge has been responsible for a number of paradoxes. Some epistemologists claim that in the case of knowledge justification entails truth or that belief implies truth as there is a causal relation between truth and belief. Truth hence becomes redundant in the definition of knowledge. I do not drop the truth condition for this reason because this denies the autonomy of the distinct conditions for knowledge. I argue that truth and knowledge are inseparable. However. “that p is true” should not be a necessary condition in the definiens of the definiendum “S knows that p is true.” Whereas the quest of truth is a necessary condition for knowledge. While I drop the truth condition from the definition of knowing that p is true, I do not dropthe condition that p is false from the definition of knowing that p is false. This means that though I may know something that is not true, I cannot know something that is false. This is a compromised revision of the long standing intuition of epistemologists that if I know something then I cannot be wrong. Linda Zagzebski defines knowledge as: “Knowledge is a state of true belief arising out of acts of intellectual virtue.” (Zagzebski, 1996, 271). She has hence dropped the truth condition. Intellectual virtues direct us towards truth but they do not guarantee truth. In the ideal case whatever I know will be true, but in most cases it will be true to the best of my knowledge.

Our empirical beliefs beyond sense impressions and the memories of them cannot be justified. Logically we must be complete skeptics. This is the consequence of Hume’s skeptical argument against induction. Should we accept this conclusion or not? This is the so-called problem of induction. In this paper I propose a new solution that belongs to the 'dissolutionist’ tradition (Strawson 1952, Okasha 2001). Through criticizing the core argument in Hume’s skepticism I claim the following: Hume’s skepticism against induction does not succeed in denying the soundness of induction. We are not required to justify induction generally.

A certain decline of epistemology in terms of the “naturalized programmes” or the post-modernist discussions makes us think about the form, in which epistemological studies in a broad sense of the word are still possible as a sphere of philosophical analysis. Philosophy of knowledge is nowadays shaken on its throne, which it has occupied for a long time as a theoretical core of philosophy, and perhaps even dismissed from it. The partial loss of orientation by those who are professionally involved in this sphere is the consequence of this state of affairs. This also concerns social epistemology - an influential modern trend, whichnowadays is balancing between neoclassic (A. Goldman1) and non-classic (D. Bloor2), normative and descriptive, veritistic and constructionist approaches. Among all, there are two terminologically different though in fact similar proposals: naturalization and socialization. Within social epistemology, both lead to a kind of interdisciplinary imperialism reducing epistemology to a “positive science” like sociology of knowledge, social history of science, science and technology studies or social psychology of cognitive process. We shall call this attitude “strong version” of naturalism keeping in mind “strong program of Edinburgh School in the sociology of scientific knowledge” (B. Barnes, D. Bloor3). How can we save then philosophical epistemology without indulging into purely transcendentalcontemplations and at the same time securing its connections with empirical sciences? A “weak version” of naturalism is proposed, namely, an idea of social epistemology based on interdisciplinarity. Therefore a special analysis of interdisciplinarity concept is needed.